USS Liberty: Did Israel commit one war crime to hide another?

By James M. Ennes, Jr.,
The Washington Post Report on Middle East Affairs,
May/June 1996

Washington Report readers know the story well. In 1967 on the fourth
day of the Six Day War, the armed forces of Israel attacked the
American intelligence ship USS Liberty for 90 minutes in international
waters in broad daylight following several hours of close, low-level
reconnaissance. Thirty-four men died, 171 were hurt, and the ship was
so badly damaged that it had to be scrapped.

The government of Israel has lied about the circumstances ever since,
telling a story markedly different from that told by American
survivors. Congress has refused to question Israel's demonstrably
false account, even though the State Department's own analysis finds
the Israeli story to be untrue.

Yet the most pressing question remaining from that infamy is not
whether the attack was deliberate. That was settled long ago for most
reasonable people. The question is why Israel risked its cozy
relationship with America by killing American seaman on the high seas.

Indeed, spokesmen for Israel use that question in Israel's defense.
Why, they ask, would Israel risk alienating its American friends?

So why did Israel attack? Intelligence analysts and others have long
supposed that Israel attacked to prevent the ship from reporting the
impending invasion of the Golan Heights, then imminent despite cease
fire pleas by the United States. Israel's defenders reject that
explanation.

Recent reports in the Israeli and Egyptian press suggest another
powerful possibility.

According to eyewitness accounts by Israeli officers and journalists,
the Israeli Army - the army that claims to hold itself to a higher
moral standard than other armies - executed as many as 1,000 Arab
prisoners during the 1967 war.

Historian Gabby Bron wrote in the Yediot Ahronot in Israel that he
witnessed Israeli troops executing Egyptian prisoners on the morning
of June 8, 1967, in the Sinai town of El Arish.

Bron reported that he saw about 150 Egyptian POWs being held at the El
Arish airport where they were sitting on the ground, densely crowded
together with their hands held on the back of their necks. Every few
minutes, Bron writes, Israeli soldiers would escort an Egyptian POW
from the group to a hearing conducted by two men in Israeli army
uniforms. Then the man would be taken away, given a spade, and forced
to dig his own grave.

I watched as (one) man dug a hole for about 15 minutes, Bron
wrote. Afterwards, the (Israeli military) policeman told him to
throw the shovel away, and then one of them leveled an Uzi at him and
shot two short bursts, each of three or four bullets.

Bron says he witnessed about ten such executions, until the grave was
filled. Then an Israeli Colonel threatened him with a revolver,
forcing him to leave the area.

USS Liberty was nearby

As those executions were underway, America's most sophisticated
intelligence platform, USS Liberty, was less than 13 miles from El
Arish.

We were close enough to see the town mosque with the naked eye. With
binoculars we could make out individual buildings and might have seen
the executions if we had looked in the right place.

Could our operators have heard voice radio messages revealing these
killings? Did senior Israeli officers sanction the murders, or did
they learn of them? How would they have reacted to the knowledge that
USS Liberty was nearby and might have heard incriminating radio
traffic?

Would they have been desperate enough to attack an American ship?

The Liberty attack was a war crime

The attack on USS Liberty was itself a war crime. US Navy Commander
Walter Jacobsen, a Navy Legal Officer then doing graduate work at
George Washington University, conducted an extensive legal analysis of
the attack.

His conclusion, reported in the Winter, 1986, Naval Law Review, was
that several aspects of the attack violated provisions of the Geneva
Conventions -- war crimes. Specifically, Commander Jacobsen found that
the attack was not legally justified, that it constituted an act of
aggression under the United Nations Charter, that the use of unmarked
aircraft, the wanton destruction of life rafts in the water, the
jamming of international radio distress frequencies, and the failure
of the torpedo boat commanders to render immediate assistance to a
disabled and helpless enemy were all violations of international law.

US refusal to investigate violates Geneva Conventions

For years, USS Liberty survivors have asked Members of Congress to
investigate the circumstances of the attack.

The Israeli version is untrue. We did fly a flag. We did identify
ourselves. We were in international waters. They did not stop firing
after seeing our flag as they claim, but continued to fire for another
40 minutes. The attack lasted 75 minutes and was not brief or
accidental as Israel claims. We did not attempt to hide or
escape when detected, as Israeli has charged. These things are easy
to prove.

More important are the war crimes discussed by Commander Jacobsen.
These things should have been investigated in 1967. Yet
U.S. officials have ignored the offenses for 29 years, refusing to
investigate or even to acknowledge them.

That refusal is itself a crime. The United States, as a signatory to
the Geneva Conventions of 1949, is under the obligation to search
for persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be
committed violations of the conventions, and to see that violators
are brought to trial.

There are no exceptions. War crimes reported to government officials
must be investigated and perpetrators tried.

Yet even this is ignored by U.S. officials. Liberty survivors for many
years have reported the crimes committed against us and have requested
an appropriate investigation. Despite the law, our complaints are
ignored. No investigation of these charges has ever been held.

Recently Liberty's Joe Meadors, a former president and chairman of the
Liberty Veterans Association, has filed formal complaints with the
House and Senate Ethics Committees against members who have ignored
our complaints.

To no surprise, these complaints, too, are being ignored.

Navy Refusal to investigate violates Navy Regulations

When the Liberty was attacked, Captain Joseph Tully in the aircraft
carrier USS Saratoga received the ship's call for help and immediately
sent jet aircraft to her assistance. Tully's jets were recalled
almost immediately by orders from Washington. As a result, American
jet fighter support was withheld for more than 90 minutes. By then
the damage was done and 34 men were dead or dying.

Had those aircraft been sent, they would probably have arrived before
the torpedo boats started their part of the attack. At least 25 lives
could have been saved.

We survivors have tried for 29 years to learn why we were denied the
immediate air support that we were promised in case of trouble. There
are no answers. The Navy still will not even admit that help was not
sent, even though one of the aircraft carrier commanders has offered
to testify that he was forbidden to help us.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice, the body of law that governs
every military person, provides that Any person subject to this
chapter who before or in the presence of the enemy . . . does not
afford all practicable relief and assistance to . . . troops, vessels,
or aircraft of the armed forces . . . when engaged in battle
. . . shall be punished by death or such punishment as a court martial
may direct.

That provision was clearly violated when Liberty's air support was
withheld. Yet the Navy will not even admit that we were not defended.

George Orwell suggested in 1945 that some animals are more equal than
other animals. Some countries, too, it would seem.

James Ennes retired from the Navy in 1978 as a lieutenant commander
after 27 years of enlisted and commissioned service. He was a
lieutenant on the bridge of the USS Liberty on the day of the attack.
His book on the subject, Assault on the Liberty (Random House, 1980),
is a Notable Naval Book selection of the U.S. Naval Institute
and was editors choice when reviewed in The Washington Post.